On this date in 2014, the BBC reported, businessman Mahafarid Amir-Khosravi was hanged at Tehran’s Evin Prison for defrauding banks of $2.6 billion in bad loans secured through bogus credentials. Despite getting caught, the man clearly knew which jar held the cookies since “The money was reportedly used to buy state-owned companies under the government’s […]

Lizzie Borden : Warps & Wefts
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4/23/2019

This week's Link Dump is sponsored by the lovely and talented Princess Mickey.
Brooklyn Cat Show 1948, via New York Public Library
Some peculiar wedding ceremonies from the past.
A professional malpractioner.
First, it was the bones of Richard III. Now, it's the remains of Queen Emma.
When Agatha Christie met true crime.
What the Chinese are discovering on the dark side of

Strange Company
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5/24/2019

Jeff and Joe
Soapy Smith buries Joe Simmons
The Illustrated Police News
April 9, 1892
(Click image to enlarge)
oe Simmons
was a tall, slender gambler
known to many as “Gambler Joe” Simmons, a member of the Soap
Gang who managed Soapy Smith's Tivoli Club in Denver, 1890, and Soapy's Orleans
Club in Creede, 1892. According to William Devere’s poem "Two Little Busted Shoes," Simmons

Soapy Smith's Soap Box
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3/25/2019

Anne C. Chapman went to the First National Bank of Warsaw, Indiana, in September 1880, to cash a check for $300. The cashier did not hesitate; the check was signed by her father, the director of the bank. During the course of business that day, her father came across the check and immediately pronounced the signature a forgery. He reported the crime and had his daughter arrested, refusing to

Murder by Gaslight
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5/25/2019

I’m not the first old sign enthusiast who came across this beauty of a beer sign on the tenement at 317 East Fifth Street. Grieve wrote it up back in January, and I’m sure other fans walking along this quiet East Village block noticed the ancient signage, too. “S. Cort Wines & Lager Beer” the […]

Ephemeral New York
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5/19/2019

[Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica Family […]